Yet Again Catering to RWF and Elites with change to Hero Tier Token to Catalyst Charge?

With the change of awarding an extra Catalyst Charge, rather than Hero Track Tier Token, it is a very CLEAR sign at catering to RWF and 0.1% Players early in the season.

Now, RWF Players can have an extra Catalyst Charge to convert a Myth track item from early bosses into Tier Token, and that’s if for some “unlucky” reason they couldn’t buy/funnel full Tier Sets to each Raider with split runs to begin with.

On the other hand, “Mole People” who hardly do 2-5 keys or Normal and maybe a couple of Heroic Raid bosses in first two/three weeks, have to spend their only ONE Hero track item each week (coming from weekly vault and possibly at a much lower ilvl) for a Tier gear. Costing them more Crests to further upgrade and of course use a weekly vault item.

This obviously is a VERY BIG nerf for Mole People and yet just another convenient QoL option for RWF and 0.1% Elites.

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Oh, I’m sorry…do you somehow believe the evil “RWF and 0.1% players” weren’t already going to be 4/4 before they set foot in mythic?

I understand that demonizing the filthy mythic raiders is a favorite pastime of these forums, but if literally the only place you were getting heroic raid level gear was your vault, you’re not earning these achievements before they’re finished running splits anyway.

edit:
And to be clear, I’m not sure I particularly like this change. On one hand, the catalyst can be used to min-max other slots if you happen to get lucky and don’t need it to fill out set bonuses. And it will be better later in the season where getting gear for alts isn’t that difficult. On the other hand, if you get unlucky on drops and don’t have something to convert right away, it will end up being something of a let-down to not have the token to exchange for a piece.

See how easy it was to criticize this without resorting to your ridiculous “woe is me, I’m a second class citizen!” premise?

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How the hell does this cater to anybody? It’s just a dumb change overall.

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Sorry you can’t buy your carry for a piece of higher level gear anymore.

I’ll miss using it on alts who stop at KSM but want to collect sets, that’s about all. Let’s be real about how difficult that hurdle isn’t. Most of the time I’m already down to the last 2 hero pieces and sit on the token waiting to see what comes up in the vault first. Not really missing out when I don’t even spend it for a couple weeks.

The only major downside is that late in a season catalyst charges don’t matter at all.

Major upside: If you want to PVP and PVE on the same character, it isn’t as stupidly punishing.

Except the RWF types will absolutely split run and funnel gear like they’ve always done and Blizzard will “obviously” (wink wink nudge nudge) tune knowing this and accounting for this bonus early catalyst charge and totally won’t jack anything up and get it perfectly right from the get go. I mean just look at their history of perfectly tuned and balanced content that goes unchanged for months and years on end and stands as a testament to the masterful perfection of balance.

And being competent enough to get access to groups capable of getting hero track token boss kills isn’t exactly that hard. Your choice if you choose to fall behind the curve (and you can spare me the “you have a life” tripe).

The main effect of this is to force raiders into more M+ groups, which I would imagine is why Blizzard is doing it.

Can someone explain the change, I don’t follow patch notes or PTRs ever and just yOLO everything.

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Sure.

For the last few tiers, whenever you complete 1 of these: Keystone Master, 1600+ PvP rating, or Ahead of the Curve, you get another seasonal achievement. And that achievement has given you a token you could redeem for 1 piece of tier gear of your choice.

They’re changing it so that it no longer gives you that piece of gear, it gives an extra cataclyst charge instead.

You still need to find an additional piece of gear to catalyst, to get where we were before.

Essentially, everyone gets 1 less piece of loot, starting next season.

Ah, I mean this could benefit people who are able to stack mythic track main set pieces early season by giving them additional myth track tier. It could be annoying to farm pieces of gear to cata though if you’re just looking for heroic. Sort of annoying if you have to farm keys to find a piece to cata, but good if you are sitting on a mythic piece I guess.

It’s a nerf to people doing 1600 PvP for week 1 Hero gear before going into raid.
People getting KSM/AotC would likely be getting Hero pieces anyways but the extra catalyst charge is functionally the same for most in the long run.

Except for tanks and healers.

That only really applies for raid guilds that have priority loot rules. For M+, pug tanks and raid guilds with more casual loot rules, is still roughly the same.

Like I said, the motive for Blizzard is to drive more raiders back into M+ to prop up its participation numbers, by taking gear away from people. Since M+ is the only infinite source of free loot in the game.

But it’s a buff if you want to do PVP for its own sake on that raid character.

TBH they really need to separate catalyst charges for each gear type. PVP gear has its own sockets now, so why not tier conversion too. Or lock down setbonuses with a timegate, you can’t have 2p the first week of mythic raid being open, and can’t have 4p until week 4 or so. Deter players from trying to use PVP tier pieces to complete a PVE 4-set right away, and give a light slap to degen tier farming by RWFs.

While the OP is being over-the-top, he also has a point.

The people who can get the achievement quickly with a pre-made group are far more likely to have a catalyst-able piece of high-track gear laying around compared to the average Joe who PUGs or who slowly works towards the achievement with a friend or two. Those of us in that boat (like me) are basically getting a piece of gear taken away. Feels bad.

This sounds like complaining, just to complain… how does it help JUST them though?

You’re saying that players who complete more challenging content will get more rewards?
So what’s your point?